The Faberry In Our Stars
by Onehellagaykid
Summary: The funeral scene with faberry as Gus and Hazel. Angsty.
Rachel stepped up and placed the pack of cigarettes on Quinn's coffin. She smiled as she pulled out a folded piece of paper. She opened it and then placed it back in her pocket.

"My name is Rachel. Quinn Fabray was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Q knew. Q knows. I will not tell you our love story, because like all real love stories, it will die with us. As it should. I'd hoped that she'd be eulogizing me, because there is no one I'd rather have. I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this. There is an infinite between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many days of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Quinn Fabray than she got. But, Q, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me forever within the numbered days, and, for that, I am grateful." She said as she wiped away the many tears that came down her face.

When the funeral was over, she went back to her car and broke down. She tried to keep it under control but she just couldn't.

"You know, she was a good kid. She hated me and everything but she had a good heart." Rachel looked up through her tears and saw Mr David Jensen sitting next to her in her car.

"Why are you here?"

"Well, I used that infernal internet of yours and looked through the obituary and found hers. I wanted to pay my respects through fake praying and to give you something." He smiled as he got out an envelope with Rachel's name on it. she took it form him and threw it in the glove box.

"Get out please."

"Aren't you going to read it?"

"Could you please get the fuck out of my car."

He just nodded slowly and opened the door. "I am sorry Rachel. I'm not good with other peoples feelings. I guess that's why my wife left me." and that's when it clicked for Rachel. He had lost a kid.

"You lost someone. Didn't you?" David just solomly nodded his head.

"She was 11. I based Anna of off her. I gave her a happy ending. One she never got."

"You're a good guy, David. Sober up, create a sequel, do what you do best."

He nodded and stepped out the car then sat on the curb, in the rear view mirror Rachel could see him get out his flask and pour it all away.

-/-/-

She had driven all the way home when she got a call from Santana.

"Are you okay? You left pretty quickly."

"Yeah, i just couldn't stay there any longer."

"Oh okay, well did you enjoy the thing She was working on? She wouldn't shut up about it."

"What thing." Rachel said as she opened her front door.

"She was talking to that douchey writer guy. She wrote him a letter." Rachel then went back to the car and ripped open the glove box. There in all its glory was an envelope marked with her name and a little gold star at the end. Grabbing it and ripping it open she sat on the bonnet of the car, reading the letter.

"Mr Jensen,

I'm a good person but a shitty writer. You're a shitty person but a good writer. We'd make a good team. I don't want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Rachel. I've got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently.

Here's the thing about Rachel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That's what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.

I want to leave a mark.

But Mr Jensen: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, "They'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I'm not such a shitty writer. But I can't pull my ideas together, Mr Jensen. My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations.)

We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it's silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other.

Rachel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Rachel knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.

People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad, Mr Jensen. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invented anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.

After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.

A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren't allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, "She's still taking on water." A desert blessing, an ocean curse.

What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Mr Jensen. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."

Rachel just held the letter close to her chest and sobbed. "I do Quinn. I do."


End file.
